Arizona football selected by the media to finish last in Pac-12 South

Arizona head coach Rich Rodriguez before an NCAA college football game against Stanford, Saturday, Oct. 29, 2016, in Tucson, Ariz. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)

The annual preseason media poll is out and Rich Rodriguez’s Wildcats were chosen to finish last in the Pac-12 South, receiving the lowest vote total for the entire conference.

Last season, Arizona came out of non-conference play with a 2-1 record with their lone loss coming from an 18-16 nail-biter against BYU in Week 1. They failed to win a Pac-12 game until beating rival ASU 56-32 in the last game of the season, finishing with a 3-9 record.

Aside from their defeat to BYU, Arizona didn’t have many close losses, losing just one game by less than 10 points and getting outscored by a total of 163 points.

The Wildcats put up an average of 24.8 points per game, while giving up 38.3, ranking them 100th and 119th, respectively, out of 128 FBS teams.

The USC Trojans, whom Arizona will play on Nov. 4, garnered 49 of 52 first-place votes to win the Pac-12 South. Last year’s Rose Bowl champs were also selected, with 28 votes, to become the first squad from the South to win the conference championship game.

Utah was picked to finish second in the South, followed by UCLA and Colorado. And even though Arizona got the upper hand on them last season, ASU was picked to finish fifth after only receiving 109 votes.

Defending conference champion Washington was selected to win the North, matching USC with 49 first-place votes. Three-time Pac-12 champions Stanford sit behind the Huskies and are followed by Washington State, Oregon, Oregon State and California.

Arizona will open up their season on Saturday, Sept. 2 in Tuscon against in-state opponent Northern Arizona.